(no subject)
What have they DONE?
The (completely rhetorical) question is: Should I watch this? Should I subject myself to the agonizing blasphemy of it all, pissing and slopping all over the holiest of holies, my Bible, my Quran, my Bhagavad Gita, my value-pack box-set of Evangelion and a couple of scans of a doujinshi on my computer? Of course I should. I may come back dead, or a madman, or even a bored and slightly irritated man, but I should do it, I must do it, I will do it, it is my destiny as writ on the firmament in stars that I am to devour every shitty Eva adaptation except for that stupid Girlfriend of Steel thing because that was just dog shit.
Okay, some background here: TMA is a Japanese cosplay porn producer who has been putting out unique re-imaginings of whatever currently happens to be popular with the people who tend to rely on pornography to stave off the suffocating loneliness of natural selection at work for a brief grunting, sweaty, slapping moment. They're a little bit like those guys that put out "Snakes on a Train" and "Transmorphers", but with an added element of stilted, mechanical sex every five minutes and, perhaps most damningly, girls who just can't seem to fucking stay in character while getting the gross dick mooshed into their pixelated privates - turning Haruhi into a limp, prone, squealing fuck-puppet is just not something I will tender! (she's totally a top, for realz) Despite this, they put a lot of effort into these things - not so much effort that they'd actually go searching for appropriate male leads or even male leads who aren't visually repellent outside of their limited circle of friends - but they do maintain a level of visual fidelity that, despite the five-dollars-and-a-case-of-beer production values, the three meter acting range of everyone involved, and the CG courtesy of some guy who torrented XSI the other day, it's interesting to note the amount of love and respect paid to what they're knocking off for some otaku's cheap thrills. Not interesting for more than the duration of the trailer and maybe ten minutes skipping through the movie, mind you, but worth noting.
Previous works have included Faith: Stay Knight, featuring the most spiritually accurate rendition of the dope of a protagonist in any medium, the beforementioned Suzumiya "Hahiru" no Yuuutsu (watch the classroom scenes for the guy who looks like he's been held back since the mid-sixties) and Kira Star, the one thing which regular intervals of boring intercourse would actually help make more interesting
And now they're taking on Evangelion. Or, uh, "Ever". This isn't particularly interesting in of itself as anything but another of their hilarious low-rent porno knockoffs; rather because, from all indications, they're actually adapting a doujinshi series that I actually have a great deal of affection for, Studio Kimigabuchi's Re-Take. Re-Take is probably the only good Evangelion manga ever written, one which starts like so many others as seemingly an attempt to "fix" it, one which probably does more to make the characters into fully developed human beings than anything ever has. But, of course, true to its source, everything is completely fucked all over; as Shinji works to fix everything that he screwed over the first time through he's taunted by the Asuka he left behind that time, things don't seem to be happening quite the same way they're supposed to, and everything seems to be spiraling towards the inevitable. It's a bit rough around the edges, and the "adult material" is completely superfluous and not even really "useful" for its purpose - strictly workmanlike and not particularly erotic. But skip through the sex, allow the guy the same conceptual leniency as you would anything with the name "Evangelion", and it's a compelling addendum to the series.
It's nice to see Re-Take get a little bit of recognition like this, really. It's just, well... I'm sure that between the dime store CG backgrounds, the grade school drama class acting, that TMA can bring the nuance and gravitas. And boy, Shinji-kun sure did get a little chubby this year. I am not really sure I can harbour the same kind of empathy for this dull-eyed, pockmarked, thirty-year-old Shinji stand-in as I could the frail, neurotic, girly-voiced Nadia palette-swap that he was. Maybe I should, of course, considering I'm no longer a frail, neurotic, girly-voiced Nadia palette-swap here and careening in Husky Shinji's direction myself, although not getting to boff the passable-to-cute cosplay girls in the process. Pretty sure that's where Husky Shinji and I part ways on the empathy express really. Fuck that guy, man.
So yes, it's going to be a disaster. A fun disaster? Hopefully. The doujinshi doesn't really "deserve" this treatment, but the entire doujinshi scene is predicated on both deserving and undeserving things recieving their rightful landfill's worth of horrible pornography. And I guess what goes around comes around. And this guy did Azumanga: Drifting Classroom, so it's hard to have too much sympathy for him when his magnum opus is adapted and performed and squarely brutalized by the Ugly Nerds Fucking players.
I know that it's probably just going to be funny for ten minutes and then I'll skip around when I get bored with it and possibly see something bafflingly stupid or cheap or hilarious and I'll report excitedly back and tell everyone about it. But hell, until someone mentions something about 2.0, I don't really have a whole lot to Eva-fag about. I'm running dry here! And my "fuck you, Shinji isn't a whiner, you try piloting a fifty-foot superbeing made of pain and mindrape" spiel gets old! So, there's this. It's something. Clench your sphincters in rapt anticipation, kids.
The (completely rhetorical) question is: Should I watch this? Should I subject myself to the agonizing blasphemy of it all, pissing and slopping all over the holiest of holies, my Bible, my Quran, my Bhagavad Gita, my value-pack box-set of Evangelion and a couple of scans of a doujinshi on my computer? Of course I should. I may come back dead, or a madman, or even a bored and slightly irritated man, but I should do it, I must do it, I will do it, it is my destiny as writ on the firmament in stars that I am to devour every shitty Eva adaptation except for that stupid Girlfriend of Steel thing because that was just dog shit.
Okay, some background here: TMA is a Japanese cosplay porn producer who has been putting out unique re-imaginings of whatever currently happens to be popular with the people who tend to rely on pornography to stave off the suffocating loneliness of natural selection at work for a brief grunting, sweaty, slapping moment. They're a little bit like those guys that put out "Snakes on a Train" and "Transmorphers", but with an added element of stilted, mechanical sex every five minutes and, perhaps most damningly, girls who just can't seem to fucking stay in character while getting the gross dick mooshed into their pixelated privates - turning Haruhi into a limp, prone, squealing fuck-puppet is just not something I will tender! (she's totally a top, for realz) Despite this, they put a lot of effort into these things - not so much effort that they'd actually go searching for appropriate male leads or even male leads who aren't visually repellent outside of their limited circle of friends - but they do maintain a level of visual fidelity that, despite the five-dollars-and-a-case-of-beer production values, the three meter acting range of everyone involved, and the CG courtesy of some guy who torrented XSI the other day, it's interesting to note the amount of love and respect paid to what they're knocking off for some otaku's cheap thrills. Not interesting for more than the duration of the trailer and maybe ten minutes skipping through the movie, mind you, but worth noting.
Previous works have included Faith: Stay Knight, featuring the most spiritually accurate rendition of the dope of a protagonist in any medium, the beforementioned Suzumiya "Hahiru" no Yuuutsu (watch the classroom scenes for the guy who looks like he's been held back since the mid-sixties) and Kira Star, the one thing which regular intervals of boring intercourse would actually help make more interesting
And now they're taking on Evangelion. Or, uh, "Ever". This isn't particularly interesting in of itself as anything but another of their hilarious low-rent porno knockoffs; rather because, from all indications, they're actually adapting a doujinshi series that I actually have a great deal of affection for, Studio Kimigabuchi's Re-Take. Re-Take is probably the only good Evangelion manga ever written, one which starts like so many others as seemingly an attempt to "fix" it, one which probably does more to make the characters into fully developed human beings than anything ever has. But, of course, true to its source, everything is completely fucked all over; as Shinji works to fix everything that he screwed over the first time through he's taunted by the Asuka he left behind that time, things don't seem to be happening quite the same way they're supposed to, and everything seems to be spiraling towards the inevitable. It's a bit rough around the edges, and the "adult material" is completely superfluous and not even really "useful" for its purpose - strictly workmanlike and not particularly erotic. But skip through the sex, allow the guy the same conceptual leniency as you would anything with the name "Evangelion", and it's a compelling addendum to the series.
It's nice to see Re-Take get a little bit of recognition like this, really. It's just, well... I'm sure that between the dime store CG backgrounds, the grade school drama class acting, that TMA can bring the nuance and gravitas. And boy, Shinji-kun sure did get a little chubby this year. I am not really sure I can harbour the same kind of empathy for this dull-eyed, pockmarked, thirty-year-old Shinji stand-in as I could the frail, neurotic, girly-voiced Nadia palette-swap that he was. Maybe I should, of course, considering I'm no longer a frail, neurotic, girly-voiced Nadia palette-swap here and careening in Husky Shinji's direction myself, although not getting to boff the passable-to-cute cosplay girls in the process. Pretty sure that's where Husky Shinji and I part ways on the empathy express really. Fuck that guy, man.
So yes, it's going to be a disaster. A fun disaster? Hopefully. The doujinshi doesn't really "deserve" this treatment, but the entire doujinshi scene is predicated on both deserving and undeserving things recieving their rightful landfill's worth of horrible pornography. And I guess what goes around comes around. And this guy did Azumanga: Drifting Classroom, so it's hard to have too much sympathy for him when his magnum opus is adapted and performed and squarely brutalized by the Ugly Nerds Fucking players.
I know that it's probably just going to be funny for ten minutes and then I'll skip around when I get bored with it and possibly see something bafflingly stupid or cheap or hilarious and I'll report excitedly back and tell everyone about it. But hell, until someone mentions something about 2.0, I don't really have a whole lot to Eva-fag about. I'm running dry here! And my "fuck you, Shinji isn't a whiner, you try piloting a fifty-foot superbeing made of pain and mindrape" spiel gets old! So, there's this. It's something. Clench your sphincters in rapt anticipation, kids.